189

MESSAGE OF GREETINGS TO AUGUST BEBEL

To Comrade August Bebel

Written: Written February 22, 1910
Published:
First published in 1964 in Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 47.
Sent from Paris to Berlin.
Printed from the text in an unknown handwriting and signed by Lenin.
Source:Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1977],
Moscow,
Volume 43,
pages 232b-233.
Translated: Martin Parker and Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2005).
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
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• README

On behalf of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, on behalf of
all the workers of Russia who are waging a bitter struggle against
oppression by tsarism and the bourgeoisie joined in counter-revolution, we
send you, vanguard fighter of international and leader of German
Social-Democracy, hearty greetings on the occasion of your 70th birthday.

You began your activity in the working-class movement almost half a
century ago as a young turner, first a patriot, then a democrat who worked
devotedly in workers’ educational societies—and the path you have
traversed reflects the stride forward which the entire international
proletariat has made in that period. At the beginning of that period most
class-conscious workers either followed the bourgeois parties or at best
sought their own class road to socialism by switching from one socialist or
anarchist sect to another. Now the vast majority of class-conscious workers
in the civilised world are Social-Democrats, and it is precisely in Germany
that the theoretical principles of Marxism have taken deepest root and
spread most widely among the masses of the proletariat, illumining with
radiant light their struggle for the complete overthrow of capitalism.

In your person we honour a working-class leader who has shown by his
example that the emancipation of the workers must be accomplished by the
workers themselves. Drawing on the theory of Marxism, the German
class-conscious workers, more than the workers of other countries, have
been able to safeguard their movement against the mistakes of opportunism
and anarchism, they have succeeded in building up powerful mass trade union
and political organisations and uniting in a single class force. And at all
crucial moments in history—when waves of national chauvinism rose high,
or when rampant feudal-monarchist and clerical reaction declared a war of
annihilation on socialist organisations—this class force was able to find
the right road, to uphold its revolutionary world outlook, its confidence
in the inevitability of the coming great socialist revolution, and carry it
ever more broadly and deeply into the masses.

In the half-century of your activity the workers of Russia see a
guarantee that in the coming decisive battle, the dawn of which is clearly
visible in Germany and other advanced countries, the Social-Democratic
proletariat will not only fight with the same selfless energy and faith in
its strength with which it won many a victory in the epoch of bourgeois
revolutions, but will be able also to win and to smash for ever the entire
edifice of capitalist exploitation.

Members of the Editorial Board
of the Central Organ
of the Russian Social-Democratic
Labour Party
L. MartovN. LeninY. Kamenev[1]